Rampage have tough rodeo road trip schedule

Excuse me while I DON’T feel sorry for our friends in the silver and black as sportscasters around town bemoan their awful plight. Good heavens, the Spurs have to play eight straight games away from the AT&T Center! How can they survive?

Big topic of discussion was Gregg Popovich’s decision to rest his three stars in Denver the other night, after the team battled its way through an overtime win in Golden State the night before.

Please.

As if any sports people around town would actually notice, the Rampage have almost twice the number of games ahead of them in unfriendly rinks, and beginning this weekend, they’ll have the pleasure of playing three games in three nights in three different cities.

Along with their 4-3 loss Wednesday in Binghamton, that’s four games in five nights, for anyone keeping count.

The good news: This is only one of two 3-in-3 weekend sets on the trip. The bad news: These guys will be playing lots of hockey when they really need a break.

Granted, the travel should be manageable the next seven days when the team will be getting acquainted with their “bussey” as they visit Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Friday, Hershey on Saturday and then Rochester on Sunday afternoon. For those geography-challenged fans out there, that’s a nice little jaunt around Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

Next week, San Antonio’s Eastern swing heads south to Bridgeport, Conn., (hey Joe Callahan!) and then up Interstate 95 to Providence for next Friday’s contest with the P-Bruins.

Then the fun begins.

The Rampage must fly from Providence to Quad Cities. That ain’t gonna happen. Without a travel itinerary, I’d venture a flight from Boston to Chicago will be in the offing after a bus ride to Beantown. Then, a two-hour jaunt down to Moline, Ill., for the matchup with the Flames.

A couple of points — don’t give in to this stuff about how tough the Spurs have it on their trip. The Rampage (and every other hockey team that has been doing the Rodeo trip over the years) have it twice, three times, maybe even four times as tough as the major league team, which will fly first class from city to city with the All-Star break thrown in, as well as San Antonio sabbaticals when the Spurs fly home between some games.

The Herd on the other hand will be gone the entire month, which means gone until the their next home game — Saturday, Feb. 28, against Rockford.

The other point is, why can’t the AHL schedule-maker have a dose of common sense? He asked for a “Popovich” in Worcester last week, with San Antonio’s 5-1 setback where the Rampage barely showed up after back-to-back games Thursday and Friday nights at home, a 6 a.m. flight to Houston, change a plane to Hartford and then bus 90 minutes to Worcester? Rather than put the game in a small Massachusetts town, an hour from a major airport, why not just play the game in Hartford or Manchester or Providence, cities with Southwest connections from San Antonio?

Then, coming up next week, that Providence-to-Quad Cities trip could have easily have been to Chicago, Grand Rapids, Cleveland or even Des Moines. I’m sure there are scheduling snafus everywhere in the league, but come on, some common sense would be a breath of fresh air.

Tough time for the call to the show

Since the parent Coyotes are in a scoring famine, Phoenix has robbed the Rampage of some potent sharpshooters, including Joel Perrault, David Schlemko, Kevin Porter and team captain Jeff Hoggan. Sure, the big club needs come first, and this is simply a tough time to raid the farm, but that fact of life will impact the Herd on this never-ending journey.

So welcome to the AHL Igor Gongolsky, Justin Kinnunen and Steve Ward. There will be ample time to get your skates wet.

Perrault probably gone for good

Well, I hope you had a chance to enjoy watching No. 26 on the ice at the AT&T Center because it’s doubtful he’ll be back east anytime soon.

The patient Perrault, one of the nicest guys in hockey, has been injury-plagued through his sixth year in pro hockey. Only once, his first season at Cincinnati, has the Montreal native cracked the 60-games played mark and coincidentally, 2003-04 was his most productive, scoring 28 points on 14-14.

Bottom line, when Perrault is allowed to play the game, he produces.

Perrault, who had scored eight times in 26 games with San Antonio since his return from a concussion on Dec. 2, has lit the lamp twice since his recall to Phoenix for the offensive-starved Coyotes. Perrault scored the only goal in the Coyotes 2-1 loss to Nashville and also scored in their 5-4 setback in Detroit on Wednesday. (Maybe to point out the bad with the good however — Joel’s hooking call in the game’s final minute led to the Detroit winning power play goal, although the penalty was controversial.)

In any event, the guy is good. They guy is hungry. The guy is gone. Gone to the NHL, and unless he ends up in another organization that sends him back our way, Perrault will be doing his scoring in the show for a long time.

Hoggan, meanwhile made his Coyotes debut in “The Joe” by skating 9:37 and Porter returned to the Phoenix lineup after his demotion in January to log 9:16. For Hoggan, it was his 100th NHL game. Porter’s two goals against QC on Friday had to make an impression on the Phoenix brass, and I’m sure Kevin had to pull in some favors to net a few ducats from teammates for his family members, who live outside the Detroit area.

One last thang

Personally, it was a nice week for yours truly. I had the chance to interview NHL-bound Hoggan and Porter Friday night, and was shocked to see the guy I visited with on Thursday, Cory Clouston, Binghamton’s head coach and brother of former Tulsa Oilers standout in the CHL glory days, Shaun Clouston, get the call north to be the head coach in Ottawa!

I don’t have the chance to work at the NHL level, and that’s fine given I love living in San Antonio and consider myself a “born-again Texan” so it’s really cool to see guys I’ve just visited with on TV, in the show playing/coaching at that level.